Predator Drones And The Drug War

It’s only a matter of time until predator drones are armed in the name of the drug war. After that it’s only a matter of time until some innocent Mexican family mistaken as drug couriers crossing the border are blasted into a million mushy pieces. In the meantime the cartels are better armed and have more resources, up to and including super high-tech tunnels to move their goods. American drug habits are voracious. They will continue to be. This won’t end well.

When you have corrupt enforcement and political friends on both sides of the border, all the rest is kabuki. Cartels get paid by selling their product, DEA and Border Patrol gets paid by expanding to using drones, the money gets spread around real nice. The only loser is the people across both landscapes.

Its not only these high dollar remote controlled drones that only Federal agency’s can afford to run, small towns are getting into the act on there own. Take Lancaster California, they are mounting a surveillance pod on a used and leased Cessna 182 to fly around several hours every day by a contract pilot. The cost will be 100,000 a month for this relatively small city. The sensor pod capabilities are not widely discussed, however the pod is a local product in an area full of aerospace companies. So most likely the pod will have some very advanced features. The kicker is that the data will be streamed live to a command and control center maintained by the Los Angles Sheriff’s
dept. The data is then stored in what can be described as in perpetuity. I have no problem with the police using maned helicopters and planes in their current support role. Where the big difference comes now is the constant overflights with advanced optics and sensors that just look and record on a consistent basis from above.

Throughout history people have always done many things to keep the tax collectors at bay. Many governments taxed buildings in certain ways and citizens did many things to avoid being taxed. Take for instance if a permit is required to replace a roof. You want to do the work yourself and don’t want to pay the fee for a permit, so you do it on the weekend when the city is not out and about to notice that new non-permitted and un-inspected roof being installed by the homeowner. Now comes archived aerial surveillance by the tax collector.

How archived digital changes are detected is that the reflective value of a surface changes from the old surface to the new surface. An old roof looks different that a new roof. Now take that this advanced imagery always knows the location that it is scanning. It’s not a problem to do a massive comparison of changed reflective values of every single roof in the city. The changed reflective values are then automatically singled out for a human to to visually inspect the surveillance data and take further action. People are not going to like this stuff because it will be used primarily for other reasons, such as control and taxation.

“There are two types of folk music:
quiet folk music and loud folk music.
I play both.”